culbuter

\kyl.by.te\

/\kyl.by.te\/ verb

The verdict

“culbuter” is uncommon French (frequency #79,196 among 8,609 “C” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#79,196
frequency rank, French
8,609
“C” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Faire une culbute ; tomber de soi-même.

Corpus desk

Index FR-culbuter · culbuter · French

culbuter · rank #79,196 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #79,196
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 8,609
  • PHOTO-FINISH culpabilisant

Nearest frequency peer: culpabilisant (+1 rank slots)

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Rangs de longue queue près de « culbuter »

Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court

corpus weight

What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « culbuter » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for culbuter
PropertyValue
Headwordculbuter
LanguageFrench
Part of speechVerb
IPA\kyl.by.te\
Letters8
Frequency rank#79,196
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Longue queue: rang de « culbuter » en français

De gauche à droite: le peu qui porte la parole quotidienne, puis la longue queue quasi invisible.culbutertombe dans cette queue de rareté:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Voisins rares de la même bande: « culpabilisant » (#79,197), « critics » (#79,194), « cuma » (#79,198). Parmi 8,609 lemmes en « C », « culbuter » est au #79,196. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

culbuter is uncommon French at frequency #79,196 among 8,609 “C” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed \kyl.by.te\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for culbuter, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.

This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is culbuter, spelled C-U-L-B-U-T-E-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    Faire une culbute ; tomber de soi-même.
  2. 2
    Faire tomber quelqu’un ou quelque chose, renverser.
  3. 3
    Faire l’amour, posséder sexuellement.
  4. 4
    Rejeter en désordre.
  5. 5
    Retourner une feuille sur la même forme après l'avoir tiré à blanc.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how culbuter appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. En ce moment, les chiens se jetèrent de côté, le traîneau fut culbuté et le couple précipité dans la neige.
  2. . Une flamme d’enfer avait embrasé un instant la rue, la poussière et la fumée furent telles, que les quelques passants aveuglés hurlèrent d’épouvante, dans le saisissement de cette fournaise où ils croyaient culbuter.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "culbuter"?
"culbuter" is spelled C-U-L-B-U-T-E-R. The IPA pronunciation is \kyl.by.te\.
What does "culbuter" mean?
As a verb, "culbuter" means: Faire une culbute ; tomber de soi-même.
How do you pronounce "culbuter"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "culbuter" is \kyl.by.te\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "culbuter" come from?
"culbuter" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "culbuter", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list